Progressive sovereign wealth funds

Abstract

Equity and efficiency can both be promoted, under some circumstances, by means of a sovereign wealth fund that mainly invests in the world stock market and whose gains are earmarked to a social dividend. A simple overlapping generation model with a fraction of hand-to-mouth agents is developed in which the government uses public debt to create such a fund. The socially optimal size of the fund is strictly positive and determined according to a formula that can be empirically implemented. While this policy is similar to popular capitalism in aiming at a more egalitarian distribution of capital income, it is predicated on a different notion of good society.